Greening your online habit
If you think that just staying inside the house and surfing the Internet will help reduce your carbon footprint, think again.
The Internet’s effect on the environment is complex but not yet
fully understood. However, you cannot deny that the websites you check
use electricity too, and the search engines you use consume massive
amounts of energy just to process a simple search for “green living.”
According to researchers Mark Mills and Peter Huber, the Internet
will consume up to half of the US annual electricity within ten years.
You don’t usually see the environmental impact of Internet use, but
it’s there.
As an environmentally conscious person who tries to live in a
greener home, eat locally grown fruits and vegetables, and use energy
efficient modes of transportation, you should rethink how to make your
online habit greener too.
Internet Service Provider (ISP)
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are what you need to connect to
the Internet. But there are also some ISPs that take pride in their
environmental credentials.
In the UK, there’s Green ISP,
a non-profit ISP innovation founded in 2003 meant to help individuals
lessen carbon footprints. Green ISP offsets the 25 tons of carbon they
produce as part of their business in a year by planting one tree for
every broadband or web hosting customer they get. The offices of this
highly regarded ISP are also powered partly by solar panels.
Another venture is the EcoISP,
presumably the first unlimited dial-up ISP. It pledges 17 percent of
its monthly fee to an environmental cause the customer chooses. A true
case of doing good and engaging into business, EcoISP also hopes to
build an online green community.
Email
Using email is probably one of the most prevalent means of
communication these days, so why not help the environment while sitting
there and clicking buttons? Care2 is a leading environmental community with over 100,000 users using its free email service, inclusive of 100MB storage space.
Another one, Community Mail
provides eco-friendly mail, with the email service powered a hundred
percent by renewal energy. Ten percent of their annual revenue is also
used for environmental projects.
Web Hosting
As with ISPs, there are a lot of web hosting providers offering
trees planted for every customer and such. But learn how to find a good website hosting provider that uses less power for its servers and data centers. To start, there’s Think Host, Greenest Host, SuperGreen, and Sustainable Websites.
Search Engine
A search engine result actually gives off carbon emissions. Think of
all the times you just typed up a term on Google because you forgot the
exact website or forgot to bookmark it. Data centers add to the
pollution so finding green search engines are the way to go.
Eco-friendly Ecocho, for example, plants two trees for every thousand searches using Yahoo search results. Blackle
is another example. It is actually the black screen version of Google,
and it helps the environment because it consumes less monitor energy
than the regular white one.
Applications
Applications are no longer just helpful tools, they can help the environment as well.Carbonetworks can help manage your emissions, and Google Transit can be used for charting a trip using public transportation.
Online collaboration bids goodbye to face-to-face meetings with Zoho Office Suite and Skype, whereas Box helps you upload files of clients instead of printing it or sending a CD. For bloggers, CO2Stats help determine the carbon footprint of your site.
GreenPrint helps you print only the things you need, excluding banner ads, URLs and legal disclaimers. FreshBooks are for billing online instead of sending paper invoices. Meanwhile, TaskPower 3 reduces the power used by your system, Breeze helps send out email campaigns, and MyFax lets you send or receive virtual faxes.
Sources:
Franklin, Brian. “Being Environmentally Friendly On The Internet.” Retrieved March 22, 2009 from
http://focusorganic.com/being-environmentally-friendly-on-the-internet/
“GreenDev: 50 Environmentally Friendly Apps, Hosts and Resources.” Retrieved March 22, 2009 from
http://www.virtualhosting.com/blog/2008/greendev-50-environmentally-friendly-apps-hosts-and-resources/
“Green Guide to Surfing the Web.” Retrieved March 22, 2009 from
http://www.theenvironmentsite.org/guides/green-study/green-guide-to-surfing-the-web/
“Searching The Internet The Environmentally Friendly Way.” Retrieved March 22, 2009 from
http://www.webwisebusiness.co.uk/tabid/85/default.aspx?article=Searching+The+Internet+The+Environmentally+Friendly+Way%2071
Spring, Tom. “Surf the Web and Save the Earth.” Retrieved March 22, 2009 from
http://www.pcworld.com/article/64244/surf_the_web_and_save_the_earth.html
(Published 07 April 2009, Smart Communications, Inc.)
